Monday, December 19, 2016

The Full Monty exposes you to the business intelligence that matters at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

Trump tests tech titans; this week in fake news; the future of work; preparing for a Twitter attack; Facebook is a media powerhouse; Microsoft makes a surprising comeback, partly related to A.I.; Yahoo gets hacked again; Uber ignores the DMV; Michigan passes autonomous vehicle regulations to allow for testing and development; speed listening is a [bad] thing; influencers are in for 2017; you have the right to leave a bad review if it's true; make a business impact with your analytics; the best memes of 2016 and more in this week's edition of The Full Monty. Trivia and the poem of the week are now exclusively on The Full Monty podcast.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Program Note

This is the final edition of The Full Monty for 2016. We'll pick up again on January 2, 2017. Feel free to browse past issues or check out the Flipboard magazine meanwhile.

Interestingly, there was no one from Twitter, Trump's favorite platform. Twitter says it was a retaliatory move, as the company refused to create a #CrookedHillary emoji for the campaign; Trump's team says "the conference table was only so big." Well, if you take a good look at it, there were four seats at one end of table and three at the other; and 16 percent of the attendees were Trump relatives.

The President & CEO of the NY Times delivered this speech at the Detroit Economic Forum this week. It included this plea: "The big search and social companies must do more to sustain the economics of real journalism."

Four areas to hack for transforming the future of work are: digital transformation, workplace flexibility, career development, and more contingent workers. Not coincidentally, these are areas of focus for my company, Brain+Trust Partners.

Meanwhile, marketers are facing a tech overload with so many vendors under their management. Add to that the incessant push by new vendors to review their capabilities and make sense of it all amid digital transformation efforts. Another Brain+Trust Partners service.

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Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

Platforms

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

Twitter's iOS app gives users the ability to stream live video, powered by Periscope but not requiring a separate download. Stay tuned to see how this compares to Facebook's version.

Germany will impose sanctions on platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter, that don't do enough to address hate speech. This is a bit of a slippery slope. Will Germany also go after towns that are plagued by hate-filled graffiti?

GOOGLE

Google's AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is now showing Google Image Search results. When you consider the importance of visual communication, this speedier image search functionality will have an appreciable impact. How are your visuals?

SNAP

Snapchat has added four new features to the service, trying to stay cool and keep up with the competition. These include group chats, more editing features, and the ability to identify songs playing in the background.

Collaborative/ Autonomous Economy

LODGING

After years of playing the nice guy, Airbnb now finds itself on the defensive in some of its biggest markets, and the pressure doesn’t suit. The company has unleashed lawsuits, held rallies, and spent millions on lobbying campaigns. It has decried political adversaries and brandished opposition research on hotels. The clashes lay bare an ugly truth: Under fire, Airbnb is a corporation like any other. It’s not that nice at all.

Oculus's CEO is now the head of Facebook's PC-based VR division. This indicates that Facebook is getting serious about VR outside of the dorky headset option and looking at more mainstream options for this burgeoning technology.

AUDIO

A deleterious new trend is speed listening. Don't. Do. It. See? I wrote that in slow motion, just in case you're speed reading.

Program of the Week: If you'd like a boost of caffeine to your brain, try Marketing Over Coffee. John Wall and Christopher Penn break down advanced marketing techniques for you. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts.

Privacy / Security / Legal

The story of how one couple fought for the legal right to leave a bad online review. Some companies hide a non-disparagement clause in the fine print of their terms of service and sue individuals who post truthful bad reviews about them. Congress unanimously passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act and President Obama signed it into law. Can you imagine Donald Trump signing that? He previously mentioned he'd "open up the libel laws" to pursue newspapers that wrote negative things about him.

You might call 2016 the Year of the Hack. Yahoo's disclosure is the latest in a string of cyber attacks and consumers are concerned. But most are unlikely to do anything about it. If you'd like to try out a top-notch password management system that comes with warnings for breaches and can automatically change your passwords across sites, my favorite is Dashlane.

Measurement / Metrics / Data

Avinash Kaushik is always the best source on analytics, and this article proves that to be true. Five Key Elements for a Big Analytics-Driven Business Impact should put your mind at rest with regard to technology (pick one and stick with it), having the right measurement model and dashboard, looking at the big picture vs. the small, and focusing on people.

Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.

A quite note: this week is a little different. You see, as I was finalizing the newsletter (usually takes me about six hours), something went wrong and I lost the draft. Pfft. Gone. I posted about it on Facebook and within hours, I found that Christopher Penn had crowdsourced the edition, with the help of Shel Holtz, Christopher Carfi and Cathleen Rittereiser. It made me think of how the town of Bedford Falls came together to help George Bailey in his hour of need in It's A Wonderful Life,and how Clarence wrote "Remember: no man is a failure who has friends," and how his brother Harry toasted him at the conclusion, "To my brother George. The richest man in town."

And today, I feel like the richest man in town. Thank you to Chris & friends.

P.S. Stay tuned, as I'll be making some changes as a result of this little hiccup.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

Industry

Amazon pokes the 800 pound gorilla with Amazon Go, a cashier-free experience aimed at the digital generation. The real question is, who’s the intended target? Techcrunch names Instacart, but it sounds more like a rhyming competitor named Walmart.

Has the MarTech bubble burst? Not yet, but Walker Sands says it’s looking ‘plump’, with plenty of consolidation and VC capital not as plentiful. Perhaps this time next year, we’ll be looking at more of a cooked goose?

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Get the scoop on what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours.

Platforms

Google and Slack join forces for tighter integration with G Suite, according to Techcrunch and the rest of the Valley press. How long this marriage lasts will depend on what happened to Slack’s internal document collaboration efforts.

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

BusinessInsider advocates for Facebook to buy Twitter, citing the former’s News Feed as ill-suited for real-time news and “live”, while the latter struggles to find its way and a functional strategy.

REDDIT

Reddit’s conspiracy subreddit hasn’t always been a home to serious conspiracy nuts; it used to be just harmless banter. But that has changed as part of the troubling rise of fake news and unsubstantiated memes (like the PizzaGate tale that led to an arrest after a man motivated by reading fake news opened fire in a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant). To address the problem, Reddit has added the conspiracy subreddit to its “no ads” list.

Collaborative/ Autonomous Economy

LODGING

According to Mashable and the Australian Consumer Commission, AirBnB scams have tripled this year. Fake listings, fake sites, and fraudulent payment schemes plague the brand and consumers alike.

Starbucks calls it an “innovative conversational ordering system.” Its name: My Starbucks Barista. It allows customers to place orders by voice command or by text. A demonstration video showed a customer making a complex order (including “double upside down macchiato half decaf with room and a splash of cream in a grande cup”) which the bot understood correctly. No idea whether the bot will proceed to mis-spell your name on the side of cup for nostalgia’s sake.

The campaign invites fans to use messaging app Kik (which embraced bots early with its Bot Shop) to interact with a chatbot that emulates Kalani Hilliker, a 16-year-old entertainer. To date, results include 14 times more conversations with the chatbot than with an average post by the real celebrity, 91% positive sentiment, and an average of 17 messages per conversation, nearly half of which lead to a coupon deliver. The coupons themselves are driving more than 50% click-throughs.

A 10-person team is developing experiences for voice-controlled technology like Google Home and Amazon Echo. For instance, the team introduced an Amazon Echo Skill for Good Housekeeping that lets users get a guide to removing stains (which also plays music in the background while you follow the instructions). Another skill was created for Elle (which answers horoscope questions) and another for two of the publisher’s daily newspapers (adding their news to the Echo’s Flash Briefings feature).

Dutch police are planning to use AR to fight crime. An AR-fueled rig can be used to mark evidence and leave short notes about a crime scene. It could also be used to create reconstructions of crimes in courtrooms, among other applications.

The Global Virtual Reality Association is a non-profit collaboration of Google, Oculus (from Facebook), Vive (from HTC), Acer, Samsung, and Sony. The association’s website says its goal is to promote responsible development and adoption. It promises members will develop and share best practices, conduct research, and bring the international VR community together. It will also be a resource for consumers, policymakers and industry.

Dating app Tinder is the latest company to introduce a podcast. DTR (Define the Relationship) is a six-part series that covers dating-related issues in the digital age (e.g., how to build an online profile). Tinder is relying on data to help frame the episodes. For example, the first episode looks at the tendency for people to start an online dating encounter with the message, “hey.” The episode points out that you’re more likely to get a response if you use a GIF than just say, “hey.” Tinder knows because the GIF search engine baked into the Tinder app reveals that people use GIFs on the app are 30% more likely to get a response and have conversations that last twice as long. The company will promote the podcast within the app.

Social influencer campaigns are hot. They’re also mostly short-term. L’Oreal Paris thinks that’s a mistake. The company’s “Beauty Squad” initiative is designed to “craft a different type of relationship” with influencers. The squad includes five of the UK’s most influential beauty bloggers with a combined reach of more than 5 million YouTube viewers (and equally impressive numbers through other social media channels). The squad will be L’Oreal brand ambassadors, creating content to promote product awareness and drive engagement. Assembling a team with a cumulative 5 million YouTube subscribers rather than going after one with far more was an attempt to be more authentic; the squad members are already known for their knowledge and expertise in their fields (one is known for skincare, another for hair, for example).

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

OpenDoor is a startup worth emulating. Their business model: taking advantage of a theoretical arbitrage opportunity (earning fees on houses sold at a slight mark-up) by leveraging technology in pursuit of previously impossible scale that should, in theory, ameliorate risk.

Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.

According to data published in November, about half of US advertising and marketing executives identified artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented realities, the internet of things and “conversational marketing” as critical emerging technology for marketing.

Monday, December 5, 2016

The Full Monty exposes you to the business intelligence that matters at the top of every week. Please sign up for our email updates to make sure you don't miss a thing. And please share this with your colleagues if you find it valuable.

We move from fake news to censorship; the state of social media 2016; streaming video wars; Facebook addresses affordable housing; Snapchat is changing how we think about social networks; Airbnb works with the EU; an important 4-part series on Uber and its economic impact; chatbots improve customer experience; the future of autonomous vehicle ownership; how one journalist became an influencer; looking at the silent film industry for VR direction;the evolution of a data-driven company; Sherlock Holmes was the original technology distruptor and more in this week's edition of The Full Monty. Trivia and the poem of the week are now exclusively on The Full Monty podcast.

Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and those that didn't make the cut for publication — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.

Facebook is reportedly creating a censorship tool that will allow it get into China. The tool will allow it to suppress posts appearing in people's feeds in specific geographic areas. Clearly, this will allow state government to block any news that it doesn't want its people to see. Talk about fake news.

According to data published in November, about half of US advertising and marketing executives identified artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented realities, the internet of things and “conversational marketing” as critical emerging technology for marketing.

SPONSOR

Get the scoop on what 500 marketers (budgets up to $10 million) believe and how those beliefs influence their behaviors when it comes to hiring and firing agencies just like yours.Download this FREE 16 page report, full of information, insight and guidance on how to best approach prospects based on the findings.

Some of the results are going to really surprise you.

Platforms

TWITTER / PERISCOPE / VINE

Should Facebook buy Twitter? According to one columnist, Facebook's commitment to live video makes Twitter an attractive add-on. Between Facebook's fake news problem and Twitter's troll problem, it would be a match made in purgatory.

In Denmark, prosecutors have indicted Uber due to the behavior of two of its drivers there. An interesting wrinkle for a company that is constantly trying to keep its drivers at arm's length with respect to being considered employees vs. contractors, yet trumpeting their screening process. You really are judged by the company you keep.

Uber wants to make drivers' jobs more pleasant with the addition of a "Compliments" section of the app, where riders can leave feedback and provide a written note for their drivers. Or you know, you could actually talk to them, like a real human being.

Don't miss this four-part series Can Uber Deliver? Using data on the industry competitive economics, the series addresses the question of whether Uber’s aggressive efforts to completely dominate the urban car service industry has (or will) increase overall economic welfare.

Program of the Week. This week, our recommendation is Science Friday, suggested by Ted Wright. Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts.

Essential Watching / Listening / Reading

How you package your product is just as important as the product itself. Evidence? A tripling of search results for unboxing videos in three years. "Unable to purchase desirable products, kids all over the world can--in some small way, through the unboxing videos--indulge in the repetitive viewing of someone else in a state of euphoric consumption." How Watching Other People Unwrap Gadgets Became Big Business.

Do you like what you see here? Please subscribe to have trends on digital communications, marketing, technology and business delivered to your inbox each Monday. Between this and the podcast, it's a lot of work. And it's not a team sport, either. If you join us as a patron, it will show how much you value this kind of content.